WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court yesterday moved back into the middle of the heated controversy over the use of race in congressional redistricting to assure that black candidates can be elected. It voted to rule on a major case from Louisiana.
The case potentially will affect all 17 black Democrats elected to Congress last month in the South, and might have an even wider impact on districts elsewhere that were drafted to give minority voters clear control so that their preferred candidates would win.
In recent years, the Justice Department has been pushing hard -- especially for states in the South -- for more black-dominated districts. It has insisted on them as part of its enforcement of the equality requirements of the Voting Rights Act.
The effect of the new decision may spread beyond congressional districting to affect state and local election boundaries, too. For example, a political fight on Maryland's Eastern Shore, with blacks seeking a chance to control a seat on the Worcester County Board of Commissioners, was taken to the court in an appeal filed Dec. 2 and now awaits the outcome of the Louisiana case.
At a minimum, the Louisiana case is likely to lead the justices to clarify a 5-4 ruling in 1993 -- an emotionally charged decision that raised constitutional doubts about the packing of minority voters from scattered areas into one district to give minorities more power at the polling place.
"Racial classifications of any sort," the majority said then, "pose the risk of lasting harm to our society. They reinforce the belief, held by too many for too much of our history, that individuals should be judged by the color of their skin."
It seems unlikely that the court would back away from so recent a ruling, especially because the five justices in the majority then are still on the court. The two justices who have joined the court since, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer, replaced two of the 1993 dissenters.
Conceivably, the court may also have to decide in the new case whether to cast aside or modify significantly a 1977 ruling that had upheld some "racial gerrymandering" of election districts.
Depending on how far the court goes with the new decision, the consequences could be "potentially disastrous for minority office-holding," according to Laughlin McDonald, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's voting rights project. All 17 black members of the House from the South who were re-elected or newly elected in November's election represent districts dominated by minority voting populations.
A Justice Department appeal in the Louisiana case argued: "A holding that the intentional use of race to draw district lines is automatically suspect has the potential to make a wide range of RTC redistricting plans at all levels of government constitutionally suspect."
Among the issues the court may resolve is whether the use of race is a constitutional problem only when it leads to districts that are very oddly shaped, or whether constitutional difficulties arise any time race is a decisive factor in redistricting -- whatever the shape of the districts that result. Another issue is whether it is unconstitutional to create a minority-dominated district, unless that is absolutely necessary to achieve public policy goals, such as curing past racial bias.
The justices' 1993 ruling has left those questions dangling. Reacting to the decision, lower courts have struck down minority-controlled House districts in Georgia and Texas as well as in Louisiana; a constitutional challenge is pending in a federal court in Florida.
By contrast, another federal court has upheld such districts in North Carolina -- the same case that had led to the justices' 1993 ruling, which questioned those districts but did not strike them down. The court told the lower court to reconsider the challenge to a peculiarly shaped district that snaked across the state, mainly following an interstate road.
The Louisiana district now before the court reaches diagonally across the state, meandering for 250 miles through 15 parishes, and carving up four metropolitan areas.
Twice within the last 12 months, a three-judge federal panel in Shreveport -- relying on the justices' decision in 1993 -- has struck down plans for Louisiana's seven-member delegation in the House because of the role that race played.
The district that Rep. Cleo Fields, a one-term Democrat from Baton Rouge, has represented was struck down by the Shreveport court. The Supreme Court agreed in August to allow that district to be used this year so that the election could go ahead. Mr. Fields, who is black, was re-elected.
Mr. Fields first was elected to Congress in 1992, after the state legislature redrew all of the state's districts after the 1990 census, which cost the state one House seat and reduced its total to seven. The Justice Department insisted that Louisiana have two black-dominated districts, instead of one. A New Orleans-area district, controlled by a black majority, was ordered into effect by a federal court in 1983. It has not been challenged.
The initial district drawn for Mr. Fields, who was then a member of the legislature, came to be known as the "Zorro" district because it resembled the signature "Z" mark of the fictional swordsman. It zig-zagged across the state, taking in enough black enclaves to wind up with a 63 percent black majority.
The three-judge federal struck it down in December, saying that such a "tortured" district clearly violated the Supreme Court's 1993 decision. In April, the legislature redrew the district boundaries, replacing the "Zorro" district with one that has a black voting age majority of about 54 percent.
The Supreme Court in June told the three-judge court to consider that new plan. It did so, and in July again nullified Mr. Fields' district. It remarked that it had called "for major surgery" in Louisiana districting but that the legislature had offered "at best a cosmetic make-over."
A final ruling by the Supreme Court is expected by next summer.